GEOREX-INCUB Incubator Launch

On September 22, 2016, in the Ministry of Scientific Research and Innovation’s premises in Yaoundé, a conference-workshop was organized by the GEOREX-INCUB incubator, one of the many fruits of France-Cameroon cooperation.

GEOREX-INCUB is a platform for professionalization, technology development and incubation for aggregation, management and interpretation of geolocated data for forest, environment and archeology purposes.

The GEOREX-incubated incubator is supported by the GEOVECTORIX company (Director Carine Tsoungui) in cooperation with the firm CREX Consult (Director Pascal Nlend). GEOREX-INCUB was financed (2016-2017) to the amount of 63,840 euros by the Ministry of Scientific Research and Innovation, within the framework of the Support Programme for research (PAR) of the Debt Reduction-Development Contract (C2D) between the two countries. GEOREX-INCUB benefts from the scientific support of several researchers of the Research for Development Institute (IRD): Pierre Couteron and Nicolas Barbier (AMAP); and Geoffroy de Saulieu’s (UMR PALOC).

GEOREX-INCUB’s objective is to help Cameroonian auto-entrepreneurs to create startups in geomatics.

For decision-making, land-use planning, sustainable management of resources, natural and cultural heritage preservation, measurement, mitigation and compensation of impacts and risk prevention, are all themes that require the mobilization and analyzing large sets of georeferenced data. Operational actors (local authorities, technical services sector, private companies, NGOs) may not have the human resources to effectively carry the data-mobilization process and thematic interpretation. Given the scale of demand, current as emerging, developing subcontracting can generate employment with high added value, which may even include a progressively outsourced services segment for companies in developed countries. It is in this niche that GEOREX-INCUB positions itself, promoting entrepreneurship in the fields of geo data mining (including satellite images in remote sensing) satellite data (called "cold"), field data (called "hot"), and massive data/big data management (in acquisition and processing, storage, cataloging, archiving, displaying, formating, high value-added analysis, updating, webcasting) in connection with public actions.